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The Mist (2007) [REVIEW]

I remember seeing trailers for this film and thinking, “Nope, don’t think so”, despite Thomas Jane being involved. How awesome is Thomas Jane, by the way? Anyways, I remember reading online about the ending to this film and how much of a bummer it was. I love movies that are a bummer! Rather than paying the money to go see it, I found a way to see it online (who knew you could do that?) and skipped right to the ending. I wasn’t disappointed by it, but considering I hadn’t seen everything leading up to the ending, it was hard to truly understand the impact. Eventually I got around to seeing the movie in full, and got to enjoy the looks on other people’s faces at the ending. And now, three years later, I own the Blu-ray. See! Who says watching movies online is bad?! I bought your damned Blu-ray!

Thomas Jane, what are you doing?! This is no time to fly a kite! I don’t care how excited everyone in the grocery store is!

Thomas Jane lives in a small town on the coast of Maine as a storm rolls into town and knocks out the power. There is a residual mist over the ocean that has accompanied the storm as he heads into town with his small child and neighbor. There are a combination of police and army vehicles going in and out of town, that, considering the power outage, don’t seem all that weird. While at the grocery store, the mist appears to get thicker and thicker, when someone covered in blood comes into the store, yelling that there is something in the mist. Everyone stays put, but while investigating a generator, Thomas Jane catches a glimpse of a tentacle coming in through under a door and killing a young teenager. Clearly something’s in the mist, and clearly it’s monsters. There are attempts to escape, that fail, attempts to get supplies from next door, which succeed, and weird bug monster things attacking the store. Add to this the group of people in the store who believe the rapture is upon them and trying to prevent everyone else from coming up with solutions. Eventually, Thomas Jane and a small group of others are able to escape the grocery store, but then…

The film was originally called “The Vaporous Condensation”, but it didn’t roll off the tongue as well.

That’s when shit gets real, as the kids say, and that’s where I’m going to leave it. If you hate horror movies and will never see this movie, then I’m sure you can Google what the ending is. But considering most people who stumble upon this website enjoy horror films, I’m not going to ruin it. The reason I initially had trepidation about seeing this film ended up being the reason it was enjoyable. At first, it seemed like a cheesy monster movie, or maybe a ripoff of The Fog, and, well, it kind of was. It was intended to be a throwback to older monster movies where monsters showed up, caused bad things to happen, then people went on their way. The filmmakers were so genuine to that idea that they even released a version on DVD and Blu-ray that was in black and white. No additional scenes, the same exact movie, but converted to black and white. And because the power goes out, it eliminates most of the modern technology that would place this film in a specific time period, adding to the nostalgic feel of it. If older B-movie Sci-Fi is your thing, definitely check this out. Or even if you want to watch it just once so you can ruin the ending for other people, it’s worth it.